What? Men respond more to beauty and don’t appreciate women if they exhibit more
intelligence or ambition than their own? Is this possible? Isn’t this outdated? Even though I’ve
suspected these conclusions for a long time, I allowed for the possibility I was wrong. Many
people told me my instincts were off-track. But are they?
Of course, there are some changes, but it appears that the glass ceiling in business extends into
relationships. Perhaps the change we’ve experienced is essentially that there is now an allowance
for a degree of intelligence in women where a few years ago even a small demonstration of
smarts was a no-no. Bimboism was the rule of thumb.
In this blog I’ll deal with male attitudes and how it affects interaction between the sexes. What I
see is that we’ve come a short way, baby.
Where does a study like the one mentioned leave women? Do women have to hold back their
true intelligence and ambition to attract and keep a man? Do they become more desirable if they
are secretaries rather than lawyers or doctors, flight attendants rather than pilots? The fact that
we are still asking these questions shows that we have regressed to an earlier time when women
were told never to beat a man at tennis or let him know she can do complex math.
A single woman I know who is in her late thirties asked me if she should allow a man to carry
her packages to appear more helpless. She had read a book on how to get a man, and that was
one of the suggestions – appear to need him.
Another woman I know who is highly intelligent recently told me that men have to be
manipulated in order to “catch” and keep them happy. Men have to feel adored and be the
smarter ones even if they aren’t. She insisted that it’s up to the woman to create the illusion of
male superiority even if the females are pulling the strings. In other words, play the game,
otherwise prepare to never find a mate.
I responded by giving her my theory on the inherent problems this type of behavior produces.
Here it is. At some point, it is more than likely a woman will tire of game playing and lose
respect for the man she is manipulating. In order to hold on to the attraction she initially felt, she
might begin to feel tremendous pressure to intensify the game. Although she started the
relationship in this way, she might have hoped to bring him up to a level of maturity where she’d
be able to back off somewhat. That usually doesn’t happen. A kind of mother/son relationship is
likely to occur and, under these circumstances, she has become his mother.
